A wonderful French online exhibition on Utopian visions has some startling galleries of illustrations. They deal with old conjectures about the future, contemporary accounts of Western encroachment into the New World, and social and economic revolution. I have posted some of the most striking images below.

While the clothing styles are now antiquated and the implementations of the technology may seem quaint to us, the ideas themselves are very advanced. A set of colored lithographs from 1910 envisioning the year 2000 anticipates many modern advances:

Mechanized Warfare

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The Automation of Manual and Intellectual Tasks

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Networked Telecommunications

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High Speed Trains

A set of engravings made from late 16th century drew from contemporary accounts and drawings to present Native American life in colonial Virginia. Most striking is the naked sexuality on display.

The native subjugation of women,

and idyllic aboriginal lesbian orgies interrupted by raping English soldiers.

Finally, a set of popular posters from the 1968 revolution in France still has resonance. Forty years later, France’s working class enjoy a higher standard of living, not measured in ticky-tacky-consumer goods, but in better health care, greater leisure time and workers’ rights, and a culture and economy fostering a generally more civilized and humane way of life. Maybe Americans could learn a little about collective action from the French:“no more schools as prisons”

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“Break the Old Gears”

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“worker power
peasant power
student power
power to the people PSU [ Unified Socialist Party]”

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“Support the occupied factories for the people’s victory”

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“Despite the treachery of the syndicates
Against the hellish schedules
For our 40 hours
STRIKE”

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“We’re going to the finish”

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“Long live the occupation of the factories”

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“No to the Bourgeois [Capitalist] University
Yes to the Popular University”

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[the rough translations are by me]

It really is a wonderful exhibition and I hope that you will check out the rest of it. I have not included all the galleries or the copious commentaries. Sadly, the links to the English version seem to be dead.

This entry was posted
on Thursday, September 13th, 2007 at 4:18 and is filed under Philosophy, Sex, History.